Buried within the excavated depths of collector David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) was Simon Denny’s largest and most political exhibition to date. Reflecting its underground surrounds, “Mine” examined the dirtiness of extraction in terms of physical mineral procurement and the more abstract and unexplored mining of data, arguably now the world’s most valuable resource. Through augmented reality (AR), installation, sculpture, and two-dimensional works, Denny highlighted how exploitive tendencies link to environmental degradation, data management, and the transformation of labor. 

In stark contrast to the sparse first room, the second was crowded with imposing cardboard cutouts of automated mineral mining machinery, emphasizing the increasing prevalence of technology in the labor market. Covering the floor was a brightly colored, oversized board game based on the Australian classic Squatter, in which players rear sheep for financial gain, drawing upon the persistence of colonization and land intervention as a commercial enterprise. Titled “Extractor,” Denny’s more contemporary version, which encourages players to grow tech companies through data mining and exploitative practices, also doubled as a purchasable game-meets-catalogue in the exhibition’s pop-up store. The artist emphasizes commodification through stacked displays of Extractor board games in the cutouts, while pop-up advertisements for the game and various invented technological enhancements for optimizing human labor appeared on O when one scanned codes throughout the space. Much of the exhibition’s content was reliant on visitors using this device, which in turn generates data for Mona. Denny implicates the museum itself in mining practices: scanning Thornbill images materializes computer-generated animations depicting raw minerals, including lithium and copper, used to build the hardware that houses O, while symbols toward the end of the exhibition pertinently reveal real-time data collected through O on visitor usage of the device. 

A final room filled with Mona-curated sculptures attempted to delve further into technology’s impact on labor, though the many new issues raised lacked cohesion with the rest of “Mine”. For instance, Julie Rrap’s Stepping Out (2012), two gold, life-size feet with bright red nail polish and stiletto-like protrusions from the heels, emphasized the normalization and commercialization of cosmetically altering women’s bodies. Also drawing on perceptions of marginalized bodies, Michael Parekowhai’s Kapa Haka (2003)—a full-scale fiberglass sculpture of a Māori security guard with nothing to protect—appeared jarringly out of place within a museum conceptualized and funded by a privileged white male. 

Denny’s ambitious exhibition innovatively promoted greater awareness of contemporary social and environmental threats surrounding different forms of mining. However, while designed to express the multitude of interconnected issues, “Mine” risked losing audiences with its overabundant physical, digital, and conceptual material. Apropos of today’s content oversaturation and short news cycles, the initial concern for the endangered Thornbill was all but forgotten by the end of the exhibition, leaving audiences with only dizzying visions of a data-overloaded reality.